Poems by J.C. ; with additions.

THE HECATOMB TO HIS MISTRESSE.

BE dumb ye beggers of the rhiming trade, Geld the loose wits, and let the Muse be splaid. Charge not the parish with the bastard phrase Of Balm, Elixar, both the Indias, Of shrine, saint, sacriledge, and such as these Expressions, common as their Mistresses. Hence ye fantastick Postillers in song, My text defeats your art, ties natures tongue, Scorns all his tinsil'd metaphors of pelf, Illustrated by nothing but his self. As Spiders travel by their bowels spun Into a thread, and when the race is run, Wind up their journey in a living clew, So is it with my Poetry and you. From your own essence must I first untwine, Then twist again each Panegyrick line. Reach then a soaring Quill that I may write, As with a Jacobs staff to take the height. Suppose an Angel darting through the air, Should there encounter a religious prayer Mounting to Heaven, that Intelligence Should for a Sunday-suit thy breath condense

Into a body. Let me crack a string In ventring higher; were the note I sing Above heavens Ela, should I undecline, And with a deep-mouth'd Gammut sound agen From pole to pole, I could not reach her worth, Nor find an Epithet to set it forth. Mettals may blazon common beauties, she Makes pearl and planets humble herauldy. As then a purer substance is defin'd, But by an heap of Negatives combin'd; Ask what a spirit is, you'l hear them crie It hath no matter, no mortalitie: So can I not define how sweet, how fair, Onely I say she's not as others are. For what perfections we to others grant, It is her sole perfection to want. All other forms seem in respect of thee The Almanacks misshap'd Anatomie, Where Aries, head and face; Bull, neck and throat; The Scorpion gives the secrets; knees, the Goat: A brief of limbs foul as those beasts, or are Their name-sak'd signs in their strange character. As the Philosophers to every Sence Marry its object, yet with some dispence, And grant them a polygamie withal, And these their common Sensibles they call: So is't with her, who stinted unto none, Unites all Sences in each action. The same beam heats and lights; to see her well, Is both to hear and feel, to taste and smell.

For can you want a palate in your eyes, When each of his contains a double prize, Venus his apple? can th'eyes want nose, When from each cheek buds forth a fragrant Rose? Or can the sight be deaf, if she but speak, A well-tun'd face such moving Rhetorick? Doth not each look a flash of light'ning feel Which spare the bodies sheath, and melts the steel? Thy soul must needs confess, or grant thy sence Corrupted with the objects excellence. Sweet Magick, which can make five sences lye Conjur'd within the circle of an eye. In whom since all the Five are intermixt, Oh now that Scaliger would prove his fixt. Thou man of mouth, that canst not name a She Unless all nature pay a Subsidie, Whose language is a Tax, whose Musk-cat verse Voids nought but flowers for thy Muses herse, Fitter than Celia's looks, who in a trice Canst state the long disputed Paradice: And with Divines hunt with so cold a sent, Canst in her bosom find it resident. Now come aloft, come, come and breath a vein, And give some vent unto thy daring strain. Say the Astrologer, who spells the Stars, In that fair Alphabet reads Peace and Wars, Mistakes his Globe, and in her brighter eye Interprets Heavens phisiognomy. Call her the Metaphysicks of her Sex, And say she tortures wits, as Quartans vex

Physitians: call her the Square Circle, say She is the very rule of Algebra. What ere you undertake not, say't of her, For that's the way to write her Character. Say this and more, and when thou hop'st to raise Thy fansie so as to inclose her praise, Alas poor Gotham with thy Cookko hedge, Hyperboles are here but sacriledge. Then rouse up Muse, what thou hast reveal'd out Some comments clear not, but increase the doubt. She that affords poor mortals not a glance Of knowledge, but is known by ignorance, She that commits a rape on every sence, Whose breath can countermaund a pestilence, She that can strike the best invention dead, Till bafled Poetry hangs down her head, She, she it is, She that contains all bliss, And make the world but her Periphrasis.